chapter 2

Zoro pushed himself to his feet and stumbled forward on the mud. He had all three swords drawn and spun around trying to follow whatever it was that kept ripping them apart.

"It's an abnormal!" Someone screamed before their voice was cut off like so many others.

The swordsman trudged across the ground and two people went flying over his head towards the enemy. He recognized them as the teens as before, but his eyes focused on something else. He stared at the woman with brown pigtails, at least the top right half of her. He didn't know where the rest of her went, but it was sickening to his stomach.

These people live in terror of these things every day. He didn't know why they never saw the outside world, but this was a good reason to stay behind whatever walls were protecting them.

Suddenly something slammed into the mud close to him and he heard a few choked whimpers before silence. "Isabel!" He heard the blonde boy shout from up ahead. Zoro slowly turned his head down to the left and he felt his heart skip a beat.

That girl, the one who was so jumpy, asking him all those questions. She was the only one who believed him when he talked about being a pirate. She was strong, he could feel it in her, but she was destroyed. Her decapitated head lay half buried in mud, half covered in blood.

Suddenly the swordsman snapped to his senses and his vision became a little less blurry. I've gotta save Farlan. He had nothing against these people, and in fact they were pretty cool in the way they believed they were fighting for humanity. Even if a few of them had ulterior motives, he wanted to save them.

He heard a loud yell of fury ahead of him and saw the boy spin around the right hand of the monster. It was easily recognizable as different from the others. Its speed was remarkable, and it predicted where it was going to be attacked before it happened. Zoro watched as the young soldier dragged his swords across the beast's chest, causing it to steam and roar in hunger.

"108 pound cannon!" Zoro spun his arms and took the monster's left hand completely off as it tried swiping at Farlan. The blonde man was turning and watched the hand explode after the shout from Zoro. He would have been surprised if he wasn't completely enraged from Isabel's death.

"You piece of shit! I'll kill you!" Farlan dodged its right hand and went for the face. The beast ducked and the boy shot out his 3D gear, but he missed the tree he was aiming at to latch onto. The fog confused him and now he was falling fast.

After the first flying sword attack, Zoro fell to his knees in tremendous pain. This time, his head, body, and arms screamed out in agony and he dropped to the ground. Damned, Kuma, he clenched his teeth and pulled himself up to his knees since the initial pain caused him to collapse.

When he got to his knees, he saw a horrifying sight. The monster reached down with its left hand, its freshly regrown left hand. "It can, (cough) regenerate," Zoro watched in infuriating helplessness as the beast picked up the writhing boy and brought him to its mouth.

"I've got to move," Zoro growled. He lifted himself up and brought back his swords, but he was too late and could only stare as the titan bit down on Farlan's waist, chomping him down the middle with his lower half in its mouth.

At the same time Zoro heard the first crunch, he heard the sound of a horse behind him and turned around. The boy, Levi, was on his knees, looking like he just fell off the horse. Oh shit, the green haired man watched Levi's eyes grow huge at the sight of the head sitting in front of where he fell off his horse.

Isabel's head lay in the mud, dirty and bloody, as a growing red puddle formed beneath it. Her green eyes were open wide and staring straight into his. Levi heard a crunch and looked forward at the monster that obviously killed her. It was facing sideways, crunching on something, and it turned its head towards him so Levi could see what was in its mouth.

Zoro couldn't feel worse for the teen right now as Levi stared at his best friend halfway inside the monster's mouth. Farlan might actually still be alive... As Zoro thought it, the black haired titan with glowing red eyes snapped its head to the left and the body in its mouth ripped in half.

Farlan's top half skid through the mud towards him and he didn't want to look down at it. "This is sick," he muttered to himself, wondering why he showed up here of all places. His arms felt like bricks and were hard to move, but he knew he had to help Levi here. He couldn't let them all die.

Zoro turned back to Levi because the titan turned that way too. He was about to shout something about the plan when he froze still. The boy he was looking at stood amongst a pile of dead bodies, broken weapons, and the limbs of his closest friends. His face was trembling as he stared over at Farlan, and then Zoro saw the rage. It only lasted a split second before a puff of fog covered the boy for a second and moved on. Where did he go?

Zoro and the titan had the same thought as they stared at the spot Levi was in until a second ago. What the fuck?! Zoro saw a flash of movement that was almost impossible for him to see it was moving so fast. The titan that was faster than every other soldier didn't know what hit it as a deep scar slammed it in the right side of its face, actually knocking the giant monster several meters to the side.

The beast was on all fours and spun its human-like head to the right where no one was flying around. While it was turned to the right, Zoro watched the boy fall out of the air like a bullet and slam through the beast's left shoulder, slicing it to the bone.

It swung an arm to the left, but the boy was already spinning around behind it and cut across its back. The monster roared in pain, its huge tongue extending from its mouth. Zoro got a good look at the teen's face at that moment and it actually sent chills down his spine. He'd never seen a look like that on a human being's face before. Levi's eyes looked pure white with hatred and he roared as loud as the screaming monster. He came back down rolling in a hundred front flips, slicing the beast across its chest so deep, Zoro thought it might get cut in half.

At this point the titan couldn't even try to keep up, but that didn't mean Levi was done punishing it. "Ah! Ahh! AHHHH!" Levi ripped back and forth across the titan, blood splattering everywhere as he ripped it apart. At some point its roars shrank into muffled gurgles of blood, and Levi just kept taking it apart with his rage.

Zoro didn't know how long it had been since the last time he blinked, but he felt that if he did he would lose sight of the insane teen. Levi kept slashing until he cut so hard across its neck that its grunting head came flying off so fast it flew a hundred feet up in the air. The squirming body raised up an arm and held an open hand up to the sky, but then fifty different cuts appeared on the hand and it was slashed into pieces in a second.

Blood rained down all over the place as fast as the actual rain. The body was draining itself from all the different cuts. Levi spun his swords down the handless arm, cutting so deep, his swords were visible on the other side of the huge muscular arm. He spun all the way to its back and then cut a huge chunk from the back of its neck that spurted blood everywhere.

Only at this moment, as the titan collapsed and Levi stood there motionless next to its falling body, did Zoro notice there were other people watching. When they showed up, he didn't know, but he knew they saw what the kid just did to that titan. It looked like Levi didn't need his help after all. But they all did, he looked around at all the dead corpses around him. I let them down. It wasn't my responsibility to save them, but I could have, if I was stronger. If I was the strongest.

Erwin Smith's horse walked straight up to Levi and he looked down. The young man was in far too distressed a state to talk to him right now. I'll wait until sunrise. Erwin tilted his head a little as the strange man with green hair walked forward and up to him, then right past towards Levi.

Zoro walked right up to Levi and then kept walking past him, the two passing with less than an inch between them. "I'll be back," Zoro said in the second he walked past Levi. The black haired boy didn't react, Zoro didn't expect him to.

The swordsman kept walking and ignored the throbbing pain all over his body. He had a crew he needed to get back to and an adventure to continue. Zoro looked back at the depressed men and women on their horses, apparently protecting what they believed to be the last of humanity. This small army of soldiers had no chance if there were enough titans that they truly believed titans covered the whole world.

Levi didn't look at the green haired man. He heard what he said, and his eyes caught the image of the man walking away from them, but he didn't really process it. Days later when he was alone in his room, he would finally think about the swordsman. The man never went back to the wall with them, so that meant he was dead, end of story.

The man forgot the pirate swordsman. He went years without thinking about him, since there were more important people he tended to think about in his alone time. Farlan, Isabel, and hundreds of other comrades who died over the years. Levi joined the Scouts officially, but he couldn't change anything.

At one point Levi didn't notice, he had even forgotten the man's name. Even when the thought of that green haired man came into his mind once as he thought about that day, he couldn't place a name to the face. It would be a long, long time before the two of them would ever see each other again.